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The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them: the slighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, sufficiently probable. The incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man.

"The Prince, who is the hero both of the comic and tragic parts, is a young man of great abilities and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours, he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. The character is great, original, and just.

"Percy is a rugged soldier, choleric and quarrelsome, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity and courage. "But Falstaff-unimitated, unimitable Falstaff,-how shall I describe thee? thou compound of sense and vice: of sense which may be admired, but not esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boaster; always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor-to terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirizes in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the Prince only as an agent of vice; but of this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to the Duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable. makes himself necessary to the Prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gayety-by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth.

"The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe with such a companion, when they see Henry seduced by Falstaff."-JOHNSON.

THOS. CAMPBELL thus comments on the character of these dramas:

"HENRY IV. may challenge the world to produce another more original and rich in characters: the whole zodiac of theatrical genius has no constellation with so many bright and fixed stars of the first magnitude as are here grouped together-a Prince destined to the glory of Agincourt, a Falstaff, a Hotspur, a Douglas, and an Owen Glendower. The interest of the first and better part of HENRY IV. is no doubt derived from its characters more than from its incidents-not that the latter are either thin or confused: they, on the contrary, are clear, rapid, and full; but the action is more indebted to its agents than to its own movement, for, as to the mere issue of events, I think we cannot be said to feel a palpitating anxiety for success on either side. Henry IV. is a cool, politic prince; and his adversary, Northumberland, is even less interesting-so cowardly, though rash for a time, and so weak, that we should not care a straw for his cause, if it were not for his son, Harry Hotspur.

"But the more original characters of HENRY IV. give Fife and interest to all that happens. First of all comes forth Sir John Falstaff. Antiquity has nothing like him, and the world will never look upon his like again. That scene in which young Hal and he enact a supposed explanation between the Prince and his father, is sufficiently wonderful for its effects on our risibility,

in the first part of it; but, in the after part, when the charming old rogue descends from the part of Henry IV., and, assuming that of the Prince, beats him, even there he raises our wonder to astonishment. The man who can read that scene without 'measureless content,' ought to lie down and die of a lethargy.

"No words can do justice to the discriminated traits of valorous character in Prince Henry, in Hotspur, in Douglas, and in Glendower. The first arises to glory out of previous habits and pursuits that would have extinguished any character unpossessed of the unquenchable Greek fire that glowed in Henry of Agincourt, and he shines, as Homer says of Diomede, 'like a star that had been bathed in the ocean.' He is comparatively wiser than the irascible Hotspur, and, therefore, more justly successful. The Scottish Douglas retreats at last, but it is only when the field is lost, and after he had slain three warriors, who were the semblances of the King. He was personally little interested in the fray-his reputation could afford him to retreat without expense to his honour; and therefore he shows, after prodigal valour, a discretion which is quite as nationally characteristic as his courage. Owen Glendower is a noble, wild picture of the heroic Welsh character; brave, vain, imaginative, and superstitious-he was the William Wallace of Wales, and his vanity and superstition may be forgiven; for he troubled the English till they believed him, and taught him to believe himself, a conjuror."

"The deeply wrought Falstaff employs us at drawing conclusions with him, as soon as he is out of our company. He has puzzled those most whom he has most delighted, and may boast of having made our rigid moralist, Dr. Johnson, regret, while he condemned the reformed Bertram, that Falstaff's career should end in disgrace. Hazlitt joins in this regret; and of both him and the moralist we may say, with Richardson-' But if they will allow themselves to examine the character, in all its parts, they will perhaps agree with me, that such feeling is delusive, and arises from partial views. They will not take it amiss, if I say they are deluded in the same manner with Prince Henry. They are amused, and conceive an improper attachment to the means of their pleasure and amusement. Richardson, though, professor-like, somewhat heavy with aphorisms, has afforded us good materials for thinking and arguing on this delightful compound of various and harmonized qualities; but we are chiefly indebted to Morgann's Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff.' We have no single disquisition so good and complete as this; and as many may not possess it, who regard Falstaff's disgrace as unmerited, I will transcribe a passage near the end:-But whatever we may be told concerning the intention of Shakespeare to extend this character further, there is a manifest preparation, near the end of the second part of HENRY IV., for his disgrace: the disguise is taken off, and he begins openly to pander to the excesses of the Prince, entitling himself to the character afterwards given him, of being the tutor and the feeder of his riots. I will fetch off (says he) these justices. I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow to keep the Prince in continual laughter the wearing out of six fashions. If the young dace be a bait for the old pike,' speaking with reference to his own designs upon Shallow, 'I see no reason in the law of nature but I may snap at him.' This is showing himself abominably dissolute: the laborious arts of fraud, which he practices on Shallow to induce the loan of a thousand pounds, create disgust; and the more, as we are sensible this money was never likely to be paid back, as we are told that was, of which the travellers had been robbed. It is true, we feel no pain for Shallow, he being a very bad character, as would fully ap pear, if he were unfolded; but Falstaff's deliberation in fraud is not, on that account, more excusable. The event of the old king's death draws him out almost into detestation:- Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land,-'tis thine. I am Fortune's steward; let us take any man's horses. The laws of

England are at my commandment. Happy are they who have been my friends; and woe to my Lord ChiefJustice.' After this, we ought not to complain if we see poetic justice duly executed upon him, and that he is finally given up to shame and dishonour.'"-CHARLES A. BROWN.

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The " Essay on the Character of Falstaff," above quoted, was written by Maurice Morgann, whose life was spent chiefly in diplomatic and political pursuits, and whose name is connected with America, by having been the secretary of the embassy for the treaty of peace of 1783, acknowledging the independence of the United States, and by his being afterwards employed in forming the colonial governments of Canada. The "Essay" was first printed in 1777, and at the time attracted universal attention. The author found the popular opinion of Falstaff formed upon the exaggerations of the stage of that day, consisting chiefly in furnishing food for merriment, by his cowardice, his lies, and his disasters, without much notion of his wit and talent. In refuting this injustice to the author, Morgann was carried to an opposite extreme, or perhaps intentionally indulged in an amusing extravagance. considers Shakespeare as having found the fools and butts of the stage formed from the coarse and cheap materials of mere folly, with a dash of knavery; and resolving "to furnish a richer repast, and to give (in Falstaff) to one eminent buffoon the high relish of wit, humour, birth, dignity, and courage.' On this last point he has laboured with great ingenuity, but certainly quite ineffectually, as to establishing the fat knight's military reputation; while he as certainly preserves him from being confounded with those "tame cheaters," Pistol and Parolles. His cowardice will be found to be more nearly allied to selfish "discretion," and the absence of, or rather contempt for, the higher feelings and motives that prompt men to brave danger, than to common nervous timidity. Mackenzie, in the Lounger," has well remarked-"Though I will not go so far as a paradoxical critic has done, and ascribe valour to Falstaff; yet, if his cowardice is fairly examined, it will be found to be not so much a weakness as a principle. In his very cowardice there is much of the sagacity I have remarked in him; he has the sense of danger, but not the discomposure of fear." No critic has better pointed out than Mackenzie, in two admirable papers on Falstaff, in the "Lounger," the source of the enjoyment afforded by this character, as founded in that

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contrast to which philosophy has traced the pleasure we derive from all art, and here carried throughout, in "that singular combination and contrast, which the gross, the sensual, and the brutish mind of Falstaff exhibits, when joined with admirable power of invention, of wit, and of humour." He closes with a very acute and striking parallel, suggesting deep moral truth, as showing how slight a partition divides wickedness in high places from humble roguery. Shakespeare, Mackenzie suggests, has, in Richard III., drawn a tragic character much resembling the comic one of Falstaff. "Both are men of the world; both possess that sagacity and understanding which is fitted for its purposes; both despise those refined feelings, those motives of delicacy. those restraints of virtue, which might obstruct the course they have marked out for themselves. Both use the weaknesses of others as skilful players at a game do the ignorance of their opponents; they enjoy the advantages not only without self-reproach, but with the pride of superiority. Richard aspires to the crown of England, because Richard is wicked and ambitious: Falstaff is contented with a thousand pounds of Justice Shallow's. because he is only luxurious and dissipated. Richard courts Lady Anne and the Princess Elizabeth, for his purposes: Falstaff makes love to Mrs. Ford, and Mrs. Page, for his. Richard is witty like Falstaff, and talks of his own figure with the same sarcastic indifference. Indeed, so much does Richard, in the higher walk of villainy, resemble Falstaff in the lower region of roguery and dissipation, that it were not difficult to show in the dialogue of the two characters, however dissimilar in situation, many passages and expressions in a style of remarkable resemblance."-(Lounger, No. 68.)

Ulrici ("Shakespeare's Dramatic Art") finds, after his peculiar mode, in Falstaff, a sense and intention, much more remote from common apprehension than any English commentator has suspected. He regards the comic scenes of these plays as a deep satire and parody on the historical scenes-Falstaff being the living parody on the chivalry of the age, his expedition to the Gadshill robbery a parody on the civil wars, his braggart swaggering a parody on the fiery Hotspur, his talent of misrepresentation a satire on the King, and his whole deportment in the second part "a happy parody upon the common cunning and low intrigue of so-called po litical wisdom, which forms the chief motive of the listorical action of the second part; while his employment as a military officer is a satire upon the fast-sinking importance of the profession of war."

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